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Each day unfurled the same way. Ross was awoken in his cell at dawn by the guards. While still
in his prison uniform, he was shackled at the ankles and cuffed at the waist and wrists. With U.S.
marshals by his side, inmate 18870-111 trudged slowly through the concrete corridors to the federal
courthouse. The door lock would buzz to announce Ross’s arrival or departure. He was placed in
cages and cells and told to wait until the next cage or cell was ready for him.
The days in court oscillated between dull and terrifying. The prosecution presented all of the
chat logs and diaries found on Ross’s computer. Conversations that orbited around the sale of cocaine
and heroin, guns, and other illegalities and the profits DPR was corralling. There were chat logs
presented where Variety Jones had promised to spring DPR from prison if he was ever captured by
the Feebs. “Remember that one day when you’re in the exercise yard, I’ll be the dude in the helicopter
coming in low and fast, I promise,” the prosecution read aloud. “With the amount of $ we’re
generating, I could hire a small country to come get you.” And then there were the chats about the
alleged murders.
The prosecution showed spreadsheets illustrating the immense growth of the Silk Road, the
hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and the more than $80 million in profit that allegedly led
back to Ross Ulbricht. The jury’s eyes seemed to glaze over when the lawyers tried to explain how
Bitcoin blockchains worked, why server encryption and CAPTCHAs and IP addresses were so
important, and what happens when you run Ubuntu Linux on a Samsung 700Z.
Then it was the defense’s turn.
Dratel eloquently argued that, sure, Ross had been caught with his hands on the keyboard, but he
was not the Dread Pirate Roberts. That person, whoever he was, could be dozens of people. Dratel
even admitted (to gasps in the courtroom) that Ross had indeed started the Silk Road years earlier,
before the “Dread Pirate Roberts” moniker was even invented, but that the site had soon spiraled out
of control, like a digital Frankenstein. Ross had become too stressed running the Silk Road and had
given it away. Dratel pointed fingers at other people who worked with Bitcoins, noting that they could
easily be the Dread Pirate Roberts. He contended that there was very obviously more than one DPR,
and Ross was not among them.
Ross’s defense showed e-mails between Jared and other agents who had all believed, at one
time or another, long before they captured Ross Ulbricht, that DPR was someone else. Dratel then
argued that Ross had been framed by the real DPR.
The back of the courtroom overflowed daily during the proceedings. The benches on the right of
the room were jammed with reporters and bloggers covering the spectacle. The ones to the left had a
different, more somber feeling and were allocated to Ross Ulbricht’s loved ones and supporters.
Advocates came in from all over the country to champion Ross, protesting on the steps of the
courthouse that he was a hero, that all he did was run a Web site, and, if that was a crime, then the
CEOs of eBay and Craigslist should stand trial too, as illegal goods were sold on those sites.
Ross’s mother, Lyn, arrived every day, bundled up in her thick black jacket with a dainty dark
scarf and a wounded look on her face, as if what was happening wasn’t real. She could never in her
worst nightmares have imagined that this fate would befall her son. Young Ross, her baby boy, who
was so kind and thoughtful and sweet and smart, who had gone off to graduate school to become a
molecular physicist, now sat ten feet away, facing a sentence worse than death.
But when Ross looked back at her, he offered up a confident and unfazed stare that told her not to
worry, that he was fine.